Tallulah’s Midget

I was the one who encouraged the use of what they came to call 
        her “short” words (we had a laugh over that). 
They would write that her dress was often to be found around her neck. 
        I couldn’t see her neck; I was her midget.  
But when she was riggish, a constant whim with her, my gaze, 
        stationed at her quim, saw the punchline first. 

Her leading man had just come off stage, her legs were spread, her maid 
        stood by, holding a tray with one
condom, an appetizer. (Even sitting, Tallulah upstaged me.) Embarrassed 
        as much as bored, the actor hurried 
to touch himself up before curtain-call; Tallulah stayed. I whispered 
        the dream I’d had of her the night before. 
“We got down on our hands and knees. You were very small, 14 by 15. 
        I said I couldn’t follow you 
because I was 33. You said I was foolish, that half that is about 16. 
        I told you I was afraid of small places,
but you took me in. There were pictures of you, your hair 
        in ringlets, banded in black silk. 
‘I used to do this,’ you said, ‘and that.’” Without turning her head, 
        she got up to receive what adulation 
the audience had in store that night (the run was almost over). Offstage, 
        she found me harder to see than on.  
“You’re small fry,” she said, “and I have bigger fish.” 
        Then she practiced her handsprings 
over me, the trick that had made her notable in London, 
        along with her sluttish remarks. 

 My stature agreed with her wit. Tableau on tableau she devised 
        with me in mind, an erection armed and legged. 
Unattached, I floated free, stood anywhere, as long as the attention 
        I drew on enveloped her waist. 
The English had already cut her off at the neck; it was for the Americans 
        to cut her off at the hips—they were glad to—
where my crown was. And though I followed her as eagerly as any empty
        Cockney girl or war-starved maiden, 
I never made the papers. Reporters would no more mention me than print 
        her short words, not in those days; 
there was something too grotesque in pairing my face with her cunt, 
        which, like one of the good doctors 
she knew in England, was also “wonderful at abortions.”

Nobody who skates on thin ice will be noted for anything but speed  
        when it breaks. Tallulah talked fast 
and broke a lot of ice. No one could keep up (I was no one). 
        The escort I replaced wished me well: 
“She can’t stand up,” he said, “and she won’t sit down.” 
        With me, she never had to: I was, 
as it were, assiduously hers. And when, as she rarely failed to, 
        she got out of hand, slapping men 
and women, daring them to hit her in the belly (never the face), 
        I was posted to ward off the blows.
 
She came home to the Depression, and it returned the favor. 
        In England, there was talk of her being 
“an Elizabethan,” but that meant nothing here, where she was 
        never mistaken “for that awful lesbian,” 
Tallulah Bankhead, from Alabama. England had had enough of her—
        the cocaine, the drinking, the disrobing—
even though the public there, like the public here, had never witnessed 
        any of it. Wanting to have been there
when Tallulah stripped, the public, as usual, hadn’t been. 

I was never part of the public. I know the difference between an item 
        and an experience. One is never larger 
than one’s reputation—which was all Tallulah had here, a fact 
        Vanity Fair featured 
in comparing her to “the little threads of red that run through the dull gray 
        pattern of a Persian rug.” Better than anyone, 
Tallulah knew she’d been stepped on. When Winchell met her, he said 
        he’d heard a lot about her. Imagine 
her reply. And who’s to say that all of it wasn’t? It needed to be: 
        her rival now was Garbo, and Tallulah 
had yet to make a movie. They met at a party she threw in Hollywood, 
        where she smashed glasses—she liked the sound.  
Garbo took an early leave: “That’s a girl to keep away from.”

I knew then that I had to get near her, this “Exotic of Exotics,” 
        with her filthy fame. She flopped six times 
in two years: Tarnished Lady, My Sin, The Cheat, Thunder Below, 
        The Devil and the Deep—and, my favorite, Faithless. 
I met her on the set of Something Gay. She stopped rehearsal the first day. 
        “I don’t want to,” she said, “I’m not in the mood.” 
What did she want? “Two bottles of champagne, a big double bed, and” 
        (pointing to her leading man) “Hugh Sinclair.” 
I stood up at that. But when she told a stringer she hadn’t had a man 
        in six months, she got a call from her father,
the Senator from Alabama. The studio that had given the public Dietrich 
        now gave Tallulah back to the theater, and to me.

I had a bit part in her triumphal return: that’s when she waited in the wings 
        for the shy actor playing a Reverend; 
that’s when, on being asked what she thought of love, she said, 
        “I don’t understand what you mean, 
my dear. Do you mean fucking?” I may have wanted her to mean it with me, 
        but she was not that wayward a girl, 
even if she did tell Eleanor Roosevelt she was the most wayward girl 
        the First Lady would ever meet. 
Needless to say, her taming by Lillian and Dorothy, the Gotham Bitches, 
        followed soon after. And then the critics.

People laughed and applauded equally when, as Cleopatra, 
        she “barged down the Nile and sank.” 
To Mr. Brown’s remark, Tallulah said, “I am bloody but unbowed.” 
        You couldn’t teach her a lesson, 
but then she couldn’t teach you anything, either: that’s what people 
        forgot about her, even those who, 
like Miss Parker, should have known better. There were days 
        when I was the first to feel
her automatic carelessness (she never wore underpants; she shit 
        with the door open) and, when there were 
no more glasses to smash, the last. (“I suppose,” she said, wiping 
        herself, “you think Garbo craps orchids.”) 
A day away from Tallulah was indeed like a month in the country—
        but who wanted that? I wanted hers.  

Tallulah, having spent her hoard of short words one night,
        heard Miss Parker say, “Has Whistler’s mother 
finished?” Which was Dorothy’s prelude to having the last: 
        “She’d give you the shirt off her back, 
even if you didn’t want it.” I did, but she never offered. Oh, she was 
        nice enough, when she needed her things
picked up. “Take them away,” she’d say, “don’t put them away.” 
        The publicist who called her 
a “frequently destructive tenant of hotel apartments most of her adult life” 
        knew how little she had of that. 
She called her house “Windows” and she threw stones—her wittiest 
        remark, in my opinion. An adult demands of others 
what she demands of herself. Lacking that status, I sympathized 
	with her tyranny over servants, and the free reign 
she allowed her pissing pets—a marmoset named Senegas, after Bernhardt’s
        hairdresser, and a lion cub, who shall go nameless. 
I kept the green velvet gown Senegas pissed on. “I’m your stain 
         remover,” I told her that evening. 
“No,” she said, rummaging for another dress, “You’re my stain.”

How could one be bored by such a woman? But they were, or began 
        to say they were, and that, as they say, 
was the kiss of death. Her triumphs in Little Foxes and The Skin of Our Teeth, 
        the award she won for her performance 
in Lifeboat—not enough to captivate a country gearing up again for war:
        closed or open, Tallulah’s legs were scrap. 
Even at Cukor’s garden party, when she wore nothing but violets 
        on her pussy, the band played on; 
Town and Country fawned instead on her five dogs, the mongrel last. 

But Tallulah herself was bored—with growling, with stripping, 
        covering an eye with a hat. Before uttering 
a printable word for Town and Country’s hack, she indicated 
        the portrait Augustus John had done of her 
“a thousand years ago.” He gazed. “Eli,” she said, “fix the man a scotch.” 
        I did, and brought her a Coke with ammonia. 
“Since Dunkirk fell,” she lied, “I haven’t touched a drop. And I will not 
        until that defeat is avenged.”

The part of Senator’s daughter was now her only legitimate role. 
         “Talks incessantly,” the little man wrote, 
as if he’d discovered something. “Can’t keep her mind on one subject”—
        a note too long by three words. 
I’d heard it all before: Waking up at dawn to make movies drove me mad. 
        My rudeness is their fault. 
 I never miss anyone. I hate witty people. I let Dorothy be witty once, 
        and I was witty once. I had a violent 
temper as a child; they would throw water on me and say, 
        ‘Well, we can’t kill her.’ And so on—
until the man showed his hand with a question Tallulah trumped. 
        “You mean like ‘fuck,’” she said, 
covering her mouth. “Eli, bring me another Coke and him another scotch.” 

During lunch, for which Estelle Winwood, by then as permanent a guest as I,
         joined us, the scribbler tried again 
to elicit words he could not have printed had she said them. 
        When he stopped his note-taking,
Tallulah took her cue. “Estelle,” she said, “I’ve hired a Harlem waiter 
        for the weekend. He’ll serve us all our meals 
in drag.” “Oh, dear,” Miss Winwood said, as if they’d rehearsed, “all those
        feathers in the soup!” He wrote that down, 
as Tallulah knew he would (they had rehearsed). Then, having gotten 
        his attention, she added, “The fucking 
Communists want to come and take my fur coats away. But Daddy’s 
        coming up for re-election this year, 
and I want no goddamn swearing in this piece.” The columnist excused 
        himself—he had interviews to conduct— 
 and promised to return. She saw him to the door. “I’ve done 
        almost everything I’m supposed to have done,” 
she said, nodding at the pen in his pocket, “but not at the time and place 
        I’m supposed to have done them.” 

The man never asked me a thing, but he managed to talk to too many 
        of Tallulah’s few remaining friends. 
It may have been that she would have been easier to write about if, 
        as Miss Parker said, someone had invented her. 
But then Dorothy thought only one could play at her table. 
        That Tallulah was generous and vindictive,
had no illusions but herself, was resilient to a fault, and beautiful, and funny; 
        that, while alone in almost every other respect,
she was not alone in being unable to distinguish Communists from Fascists, 
        (or Democrats from Republicans),
or in lying about her age (by one year)—this meant nothing to the town 
        or the country. The man had come 
to report to a public never short of words Tallulah’s short words only. 
        And these would be cut 
from his genuine article. What else could Tallulah do but invent herself?

The reporter returned from his interviews, expecting lunch. 
        He was embarrassed. Tallulah 
sat on her bed. He turned the pages of his notebook, stopping at one: 
        “Can you read a book in an hour 
and remember it in detail for a long time?” “Yes,” she said, “but most books 
        are dull.” He turned another page. 
“Did you say to Kate Smith, ‘You big tub of lard, are you going to tell me 
        how to make an entrance?’”
“Of course not,” she said, “I’m a lady. But I’ll tell you 
        how to make an exit.” 
The man stood up. “And what about your quarrel with—” 
        “That woman is a cunt, 
and you’re a son of a bitch. Eli, call him a cab.”

        Of course, the article was never published.